Ballroom Range at Powis Castle

Ballroom Range at Powis Castle

Powis Castle was established as a Welsh stronghold, probably by Owain Cyfeiliog and his heirs, from around 1170. Parts of the surviving structure are thought to date from the late 12th to early 13th centuries. The castle was sacked around 1275. After Owain ap Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn paid homage to Edward I in 1286, a substantial programme of rebuilding followed. The layout and much of the structure of the present buildings were determined by this work of around 1300. The ballroom range incorporates a substantial part of the north curtain wall of the outer bailey of the medieval castle.

In the late medieval period, the castle seems to have been in separate occupation for a time, as one of the "two lords marcher castells" identified by Leland in the 1530s. After the castle was acquired by the Herbert family in 1587, it was gradually remodelled as a country house. This range was probably substantially reconstructed sometime during the late 16th to 17th centuries. The south wall to the courtyard may have been rebuilt, and the upper storey layout was probably established at this period. It housed a long gallery separated from the main castle by a fire around 1745. Some of the fenestration, though the detail has been subsequently renewed, is probably of this period. On its outer wall, traces of a former gabled roof-line are clearly visible. This roof-line was recorded by Thomas Dineley in 1684 and may have survived until Thomas Farnolls Pritchard's work in the 1770s. The building was restored and remodelled as a ballroom and gallery between 1773 and 1775 by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard, architect, of Shrewsbury. The round-arched sash windows which he inserted were replaced with mullioned and transomed lights by Bodley around 1902 to 1904.

The exterior is of red sandstone with a flat roof behind an embattled parapet, replacing the earlier gabled roof-line whose scars are still visible in the north wall. It has cylindrical chimney shafts, probably of the late 16th century. The building is three storeys high. The outer wall represents the curtain wall of the medieval outer bailey and retains an angle tower and projecting drum tower, with remains of a garderobe in its angle. The south elevation is a six-window range with a slightly advanced central section. The fenestration throughout is of 16th to 17th-century type, probably partly original with some renewal work by Bodley. Some blocked earlier openings are visible in the north wall.

The ground floor retains some of the internal layout of the medieval building, while the first floor is as remodelled by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard, though the ballroom was shortened to create what is now the Clive Museum, previously a billiard room, in 1902 to 1904. Both rooms have minimal low-relief applied plasterwork decoration by Joseph Bromfield, partly obscured in the ballroom by late 18th-century library furniture which was brought here from Walcot, Shropshire in 1929, and in the museum by cases designed to house the Clive Collection in 1987, designed by Alec Cobbe and made by John Hart. An orchestra gallery is positioned over the entrance to the ballroom, with a plaster frieze. Paired Neo-Classical fireplaces occupy the rear wall, one in the Clive Museum. The ballroom retains its late 18th-century coved ceiling.